Western Short StoryShooter in BuckskinTom Sheehan

Western Short Story

Stories are still
told in the mountains of Utah, Wyoming and Colorado and in many
ranges that connect with high outposts, how the shooter in buckskin
always came out ahead in shooting matches. He’d show up on the day
of a shoot, nobody knowing how he found out, and drop his gear at the
shooting site and wait for things to get going.

The man, dressed
head to toe in buckskin, answered to any and all names, as if saying
he was all of them, at least to those speaking to him. Most people,
wanting for his real name, just called him Buckskin.

“He’s Jim
Bridger kin,” one speaker said in Churchfree Village, “has to
be.” The village was halfway up one rugged chain of hills where
pelts of many animals made the trading block. It was 1876 and
legendary Jim Bridger, great mountain man, had come through the area
more than 30 years earlier, picking his way from hide to pelt,
getting goods and ammo in return, and a good jug of whiskey. The
mountains, every nook and cranny of them, belonged to Jim Bridger.
Even had a place named after him, Fort Bridger. Now the mountains
seemed to belong to this new phenomenon of the high grounds. Not one
person ever said they had an idea of where he had come from.

“Bridger rolled
around up here for 10 or 20 years, the way I heard. Must have some
leavings hereabouts.” The nod of his head was supposed to be
enlightening, but didn’t come off that way.

The speaker was
looking down the narrow road through the village as the buckskin-clad
shooter had appeared from a rugged twist in the road, pelts piled on
his mule in tow. “He’s as good a hunter as he is a shooter,”
the speaker said. “Must have a hundred traps out there, he catches
so much.” The pelts, piled high, were from different animals, and
looked like a hunchback sitting a tall saddle.

Almost in the
middle of those words, a rider came galloping into town, yelling for
the sheriff, “Sheriff! Sheriff! Joe Collier’s dead out on the
trail. Shot in the back. Bushwhacked. Deadshot Joe Collier. He must
have been coming in for the shoot.” He leaped off his horse, still
yelling about his discovery and a small crowd began to gather.

“Poor Joe,”
Sheriff Phil Wallace said to the rider. “He was a pretty good guy,
for a lonely old cuss, and stood as good a chance as anybody in the
shoot. Him and Buckskin and that other big fellow from Hell’s Bed
back down the trail. Nobody would shoot him to beat him out of that
prize, least of all Buckskin himself if that’s what you were
thinking, or that big fellow. I’ll go out there right now and take
a look around. Go tell Curley he’s got a customer coming in. Get a
box ready. I’m paying. Is Joe’s body right on the trail where I
can see it?”

“No,” the rider
said. “Behind a rock at the second bend.”

“How’d you see
him?”

“I had my dog out
for a run and he turned him up.”

“Where’s the
dog now?”

“I put him back
on the chain, at the cabin, and then I came here quick as I could.
Don’t want him running loose after that killer. I need that dog for
company. All I got these days.”

“Dog act funny at
all, with the body, the ground thereabouts?”

“I think he
caught something on the air, Sheriff, the way he wanted to go looping
about, but I wasn’t about to poke around alone after a dead shot
who got a bead on Deadshot Joe Collier. Shooter could be hiding
behind a hundred rocks or trees.”

As Wallace waited
for his deputy, Carl Maxwell, he ran the marksmen through his mind,
seeing the three mountain men as near triplets as possible, though
they never hung out together. “Don’t covet anyone’s ground or
traps,” he thought, “the three of them saying so, like sworn
obligations, and don’t get too close to another human being, being
another rule for true mountain men. They‘ve spent most of their
time up there as loners, free of this little chunk of civilization.
Can’t blame them for that.”

Some of the
gathered crowd of hill people read those words as a wish from the
sheriff, mountain life hard enough in the beginning and all through
it without being bushwhacked at the end.

The door of
Wallace’s office swung in and Buckskin, big as a mountain himself,
edged his way through. “That right, what I heard about Joe,
Sheriff? Bushwhacked?”

He sat down with a
bit of disgust in his movement, shaking his head, a forlorn look on
his face, a deep sigh escaping his chest. “Once in a while, up
there,” and he turned his head and looked off to the northern
mountains, “I caught his smoke in the air. Smelt it or saw it, like
company was around. Kind of trusty like. I’ll miss that. He favored
our end of the mountain. That other new feller likes the other end,
the big gent, the Newsome feller.”

“No signs of
anybody else up there?” Wallace said.

“Oh, week or so
back, “ said Buckskin, “near the second falls coming off Big Ben,
I saw some tracks, but they didn’t wander far. I figure someone
might have been looking at that old mine near the falls. Seen others
a year back or so. Bodies playing games at getting rich, but ain’t
ever happening, to my mind. Place is as clean as new boots. There
ain’t a sparkle left in the whole mountain, like the ace of
diamonds being the river card you’re pulling for out of one lousy
deck.”

“Who’d want to
cash in Joe?” Wallace said. “He didn’t have anything but his
rifles, his mules, his gear. Not much for a man to leave in this
life.”

“Oh, it ain’t
so bad up there, Phil. Being alone ain’t the worst thing in the
world. That crowd out there now makes me want to run back up there
and have my fire, my coffee, and my thoughts. Ain’t many people
here in town can match the silence I know. When I saw a bit of smoke
or smelled a slab of bear meat on a hot stick, I always figured Joe
was kind of saying hello. Be lonely now, but if you’re going out
there to have a look see, then I’m bound to go with you.” He
nodded in self-agreement. “Like a family thing,” he added.

“The shoot goes
off an hour before sundown. I’ll have you back by then, so’s you
can get your shots in.”

“It ain’t very
important, Phil,” Buckskin said, and the sheriff could sense him
balancing out his values.

The sheriff, his
deputy and Buckskin wandered through the area where Joe Collier’s
body was found. Neither of the lawmen noticed any kind of clue, the
sheriff feeling they had to look anyway; perhaps a clue might fall
into their laps. It sure wasn’t going to come from the ground, he
thought, shaking his head, lost, though knowing where he was.

But it was
Buckskin, in a mess of rocks that had probably fallen in place a
thousand or more years before, who raised his arms, then his voice.
“Up here, Phil. Take a look see here.” He pointed at his feet,
where he was standing in the maze of rocks and two huge blow downs
well into a rotting stage. The two trees had fallen, crossed each
other, all limbs about gone, the trunks almost like old oatmeal.

“I’m looking,
Buckskin, but I don’t see anything that’d set me thinking. Better
point it out to me. I’m getting too old to see the spots in front
of my eyes.”

“What I see is
easy for an old mountain man, Phil. Right here, up against this old
tree trunk a man with a rifle knelt himself down and pointed his
rifle over the other trunk. He would have had an easy shot at anyone
on the trail.” He looked both ways and said, “Coming or going.
And it looked like Joe got by before that bushwhacker rat pulled the
trigger.”

“It doesn’t
point out anybody to us, Buckskin. Could be anybody in town. Anybody
come in for the shoot. Got Joe out of sight is all else he did,
hiding his body.”

“Told us one
other thing,” Buckskin said, “told us he was a lefty.” He put
his one knee into a depressed spot on the lower trunk and his other
elbow on the crossing trunk.

“Like this,” he
said, assuming the pose of a bushwhacker, the scowl of hatred on his
face. The pose was a natural for taking aim, shooting. With his face
turned away from the sheriff’s sight, Buckskin could have been
anybody in Churchfree, anybody there all the time, anybody who come
in for the shoot.

Sheriff Wallace
said, “We’ll have a look at any lefties that turn up, ask a few
questions. ‘Bout all we got.”

Buckskin, smiling,
said, “Well, we’ll see, Phil. We’ll see.”

Wallace detected
something in Buckskin’s voice, but let it sit in the back of his
mind.

The trio of
searchers was back in Churchfree before the shoot was to get
underway.

It was a scene in
the village that late afternoon. The sun was sitting on the mountain
tops, like a flash of fire on taller peaks, and rushes of sweet pink
and pale green and summer orange shone down through the passes and
the valleys forming mountain range connections. Bustle was afoot in
the village, and ladies rushed with trays of goodies for the
contestants and had long set to flames the carcasses brought to
butchering.

In the squeezed-in
hamlet, the children of miners and hill people, servicing travelers
that had to climb the Rockies to get to the Pacific and San Francisco
and other points, tossed their energies into the end of day and could
be heard all over the mountain walls, the sounds bouncing, the glee
contagious. Three short-haul stages were due in, one staying, two
passing on. Denver Pacific Railroad men, working a dozen miles away,
signaling the end of Churchfree within a few years, came in for the
shoot. The railroad, already to Denver a half dozen years earlier,
was doing lots of maintenance work and had a large force of workers.
The gaiety and anticipation and excitement built a common fever among
all the inhabitants and visitors in the tight little village. Five
minutes earlier the bar at the Sundowner Saloon was filled with men
shoulder to shoulder, their voices rising, their bets being made and
money held for prize winners. At the sound of a bell they all
scrambled to get a viewing position or to get into the shooter’s
line to take their shots.

Buckskin, in line
with all the other contestants, managed to get beside one lefty known
to him, and the big feller, Newsome, from the other end of the
mountain.

“Say, Newsome,
any strange events happen around you on your way into Churchfree for
the shoot?”

“Damned right
there was, Buckskin. Either was a stray shot or a bad shot, because I
felt or heard a slug come too damned close for the liking. But I
didn’t see anybody. If I had my dog with me, we’d have run him to
ground. You thinking there’s some connection with Joe Collier’s
getting counted like he was?”

Buckskin chimed in,
“Right on. We found where the bushwhacker took a shot, over an old
blow down.” He looked from Newsome to the other lefty right beside
him in the line. “We got a pretty good lead on who did it. Left his
calling card all over the place.”

“How you meaning
that?” Newsome said.

“The rat was a
lefty. Me and the sheriff saw that real easy. A lefty rat.”

Buckskin was ready
for his deepest thrust. “No. We already checked you out, Newsome,
and we know you didn’t do it. The lefty who did it knelt on the old
blow down and picked up some of the coloring from the rot. His knee
would be messy brown by now.”

The other lefty,
looking down quickly at his own pant leg felt the gun in his back as
the sheriff took away his rifle. “We’re going to do some talking,
mister, back at the jail. Me and Buckskin and this other big feller
who’s awful interested in things. If I was you I wouldn’t think
of running. These two gents could drop you half way down the
mountain. And you ain’t even gonna get a chance to take your shots
in the contest after all of this. I call that even Steven stuff.”

The sheriff said to
Buckskin and Newsome. “You two fellers go win some prizes while I
run this feller right to a comfortable jail cell. That’s about all
he’s gonna win.”